... we need another name for the questions raised by
metaphysics. The metaphysician interrogates. Interrogation is not polite.
Interrogation involves violence, and indeed intends violence. Examples of great
interrogators would be Freud, or Marx, or Nietzsche. To interrogate is to seek
to unmask. Stanley Cavell in one of his essays (in Must We Mean What
We Say?) talks about the danger of unmaskers themselves being unmasked. Once
suspicion enters the arena there is no natural place for it to stop.

Violence. To violate. That implies something bad, doesn't it? To violate the
sacred mysteries — that ought to have been allowed to remain a mystery.
Surely there is something holy — in this world? What's a self-confessed
atheist doing talking about 'holy'?

Derrida 'Violence and Metaphysics'. His homage to Levinas. The face of the
Other, and 'Thou shalt not...'. To seek to 'thematize' the other involves
violence, the violence of reducing the other in his otherness to 'the same'.

I don't mean this, at least, I don't think I do. It's the bit about 'not
being polite' that I want to emphasize. Academic philosophers know how to be
polite, to show good manners, to their peers, or those outside the profession
they condescend to. Nothing real depends on the outcome of the debate. No
lives are at stake when you argue for one definition of 'knowledge' against
another. Just for example.

Can you imagine: philosophers taking up arms, going to war in order to defend
some particular epistemological theory. Well, why not? Isn't knowledge the most
important thing? Shouldn't you be willing to go to war and die for
knowledge?

(As I said, this is just an example.)

Yeah, but it's not just about not being polite...

I've been too kind to myself, too. Too many sacred cows, too addicted to
comfort, too fearful of consequences. Too addicted to my illusions. But what is
there to fear? How bad can it get? Some smashed crockery, a few dead cow
carcasses. Soon cleaned up. No?

That thing in the corner of my vision. If it were only a matter of willing it
strongly enough, I could will the image to stay still, just long enough for me
to get a proper view. Willing isn't enough. Doing, that's what's
needed.